Today is Autistics Speaking Day. Folks have plenty of things to say. I’ve submitted my post from October — “Isolation, Loneliness, and the Angry Aspie” for ASD. Go over to the FB page to read/submit your experiences: https://www.facebook.com/AutisticsSpeakingDay
UPDATE: I also did write a poem for ASDay. I’ve been writing poems about Helen R. Jones, a black woman born in the early 1940’s who is likely autistic (but undiagnosed). She struggles socially, is more interested in books than in fashion, and can never meet up to the expectations of her mother, who is a socialite wannabe (on a steel mill worker’s salary, no less) in the Black community of Steelville, Ohio, where Helen is born and lives out her life. Helen’s mother pressured her to suppress her flapping habit as a little girl. Helen/Aanteekwa is a fictional construct, but I think speaking about her today gives a voice to what many of us went through as teenagers…that is, feeling as an outsider. Here’s the poem, “a bright light jolted Aanteekwa awake“.
Woman With Asperger's 